Do glia think Dr. Gonatas? This was part of an exchange between G. Milton Shy, head of neurology at Penn, and Nick Gonatas a brilliant neuropathologist who worked with Shy as the two of them described new disease after new disease in the 60s ( myotubular (centronuclear) myopathy, nemaline myopathy, mitochondrial myopathy and oculopharyngeal muscular dystrophy).
Gonatas was claiming that a small glial tumor caused a marked behavioral disturbance, and Shy was demurring. Just after I graduated, the Texas Tower shooting brought the question back up in force — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Texas_tower_shooting.
Well that was 55 years ago, and we’ve learned a lot more about glia since.
If glia don’t actually think, they may actually help neurons think better. Since the brain is consuming 20% of your cardiac output as you sit there, it had better use the energy in the form of glucose brought to it efficiently, and so it does, oxidizing it using oxygen (aerobic metabolism). Glia on the other hand for reasons as yet unknown oxidize glucose anaerobically producing lactic acid (aerobic glycolysis). They transport the lactic acid to neurons and blocking transport impairs memory consolidation in experimental animals. In fact aerobic glycolysis occurs in conditions of high synaptic plasticity and remodeling.
The brain is 60% fat, some of which is cholesterol, which has to be made in the brain, as it doesn’t cross the blood brain barrier. Although neurons can synthesize cholesterol from scratch, most synthesis of cholesterol in the brain occurs in astrocytes. It is than carried to neurons by apolipoprotein E. As you are doubtless aware, apolipoprotein E (APOE) comes in three flavors 2, 3 and 4, and having two copies of APOE4 increases your risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
But APOE does much more than schlep cholesterol to neurons according to a recent paper [ Neuron vol. 109 pp. 907 – 909, 957 – 970 ’21 ] Inside the particles are microRNAs. You’ll recall that microRNAs decrease the expression of proteins they target by binding to the messenger RNA (mRNA) for the targeted protein triggering its destruction.
The microRNAs inside APOE suppress enzymes involved in de novo neuronal cholesterol biosynthesis (why work making cholesterol when the astrocyte is giving to you for free?).
This is unprecedented. Passing metabolites (lactic acid, cholesterol) to neurons is one thing, but changing neuronal protein expression is quite another.
Passing microRNAs in exosomes has been well worked out between cells (particularly cancer cells) outside the brain, but that’s for another time.
Chemiotics II 